Singer/songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen has been awarded a prestigious Spanish literature prize.The Canadian star is to be the recipient of the coveted Prince of Asturias award. In a statement, the prize officials insist Cohen "has influenced three generations of people worldwide through his creation of emotional imagery in which poetry and music are fused in an oeuvre of immutable merit." The statement continues, "The passing of time, sentimental relationships, the mystical traditions of the East and the West and life sung as an unending ballad make up a body of work associated with certain moments of decisive change at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century." Cohen's career has spanned more than 40 years but he took time out from music in 1994 to seclude himself in a Zen monastery in California before making a comeback in the early 2000s.